Jeez- Kittie Feldie has a creepy laugh. She's interviewing Roy Blount, Jr. and keeps on laughing... hee hee hee hee hee

Gaaaahhh!

The current storm system passing through caused a tornado in Inglewood. That's down by LAX.

Goodbye Lennie :(

Question: Is it unmanly to carry an umbrella?

Book Review: Sea of Glory: America's Voyage of Discovery, the U.S. Exploring Expedition, 1838-1842, by Nathaniel Philbrick.

Read it; it's quite good, and the subject is amazing.

Sea of Glory examines this expedition's origins, follows along the journey, and looks back on the aftermath, explaining why you've probably never heard much about this astounding episode in our country's history.

The author, using such sources as the sailors' and officers' (official and private) journals and correspondence, tells the tale well- it is a gripping story, and I read it in but a few sittings.

Thanks, Mom and Dad, it was of extreme interest.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

Okay, so the clutter thing? Was pretty lame.

In fact, their result is totally expected. Because of the time reversal invariance of (most) physical systems, the only thing that would be unexpected would be not observing their result.

If, however, they had many dissipative objects in their field of view, implying what is called dispersion (and vice-versa), or many objects with other sources of current, then you might be surprised that their trick worked.

Even if you had external current sources, because there aren't that many sources of current with significant gigahertz components in their spectra, we'd kinda expect little in the way of unexpected differences.

That's not to say we'd expect perfec agreement, but, as in the acoustical case, I'd expect pretty good agreement. After all, real things are complicated :)

Hang on a sec...this isn't right, right?

The U.S. dollar is near an all-time low against the euro, which began circulating in January 2002, and is close to a five-year low against the Japanese yen. The British pound is trading at nearly two to a dollar. (Emphasis added by me)

That's just a typo, right? Should be saying that the dollar's trading at nearly two to a pound? Otherwise, the Brits are in way worse shape than we are...

I'm not wild about clutter, but some scientists are.

A Festivus for the rest of us!

Mmmmm...first amendment-y.

Right now, according to a Washington Post poll, a larger percentage of americans disapprove of Bush than approve of him. Some 38% strongly disapprove, whilst 27% strongly approve. Via Pandagon.

Stop taking Aleve.

The Times has a soft spot for Yamhill. Either that, or Yamhill has something extraordinary in the water. Can anyone guess the other Yamhill connection at the Times?

u = iwannaread

p = thisbook

Crunch. 70-car pileup in Pennsylvania and no one was killed or seriously injured. Pretty unbelievable.

So here's a question that occurred to me whilst reading a comment at The Gadflyer: did Bush have Rove set up Giuliani for a fall as a service to Jeb?

Whoo! Take it all off! Except your business license! I'll need that to stay on so I can complain to the BBB if you don't adequately "work it."

Bionic dolphin...cool!

Slate's Timothy Noah is a god among men...well, god among journalists, anyway.

Country music is getting kinky.

And today's little gem from Fafblog is:

I had a little golem, I made it out of clay
And when it's dried and ready, Prague armies it will slay.
Golem, golem, golem, I made you out of clay.
Golem, golem, golem, with golem I will play.

Yet another high class reality show to hit the airwaves soon. Leave it to FOX to create a show called "Who's Your Daddy?"...

Today my block teachers (US history and literature) made my class take the citizenship test to become an American citizen. I failed! I scored 47 out of 64. You can miss up to ten. They also had us take the Alabama voting test (these tests were from the late 1800s mind you) and I actually gave up on that one it was so hard. And with that one you couldn't miss any and it was about 50-some odd questions long. Lastly, they had us take this silly IQ exam, only five questions long, consisting of riddles I know well from memorizing MindTrap cards. ; )

Interesting: beware where you shop. My officemate sent this along.

Interesting article about Japanese gadget culture (via geekpress)

As her majesty the Queen would say, "We are not impressed."

There is a new video teacher at our school and the guy is a bloody moron. He keeps coming to me, wanting me to be the little news lady for our school news. We don't even have a news show! Plus, the video productions classes are meant for creativity and exploration, but he is forcing every one to do news. My friend has a website and gave him 'the dumbass award'. Pardon the poor spelling on his site. http://www.freewebs.com/brassknuckle1/mathiews.htm

How much do you want to bet Bose's stock will jump if this passes?

Blah blah blah blah.

Something on NPR I heard reminded me of this fact: electronics grade silicon is among the purest of materials available on Earth.

For your amusement: Comedy Central Special - Jeremy Hotz. Funny, funny guy. Right-click the link to save (or whatever it is you Mac users do).

I'm sorry, I'm going to have to confiscate that terrorist laser pointer!

Really Rumsfeld? You're doing everything humanly possible to add armor to those humvees? (via linkfilter)

Okay, these guys are slimeballs, but I love giving DeLay the shaft.

Caltech may be strange, but I don't imagine there's a high occurrence of public nudity among geeks.

More about how Caltech is strange: I saw a guy with some kind of snake tattoo on his bicep. Down his arm a bit was another tattoo:

You can learn a lot about a man by considering the masters he chooses. What kind of masters did Bernard Kerik choose? What does it say about his character?

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Secretary of Homeland Security, presumptive. Now, with more double-plus ungoodness.

Read my lips... no higher taxes.

So since we're not going to raise additional funds for Social Security, can you guess what will happen? One good guess would be that benefits would be reduced. That, however, would not be politically expedient. Therefore, we can expect that there will be additional debt.

Another possible response would be to reform S.S. in some way. For example, we might move to a system of individual accounts. Will that cost anything? The Magic 8-Ball is probably coming up, "Not Likely," since that's what they want to hear.

Gentlemen, that laptop might be rendering you infertile.

Caltech is odd: I saw a guy wearing sabots today. Actual, wooden sabots. And judging by the wear evident, they're his normal shoes.

Amusements from Wired (via geekpress):
Segway Polo
How do you make roads safer? Easy - just take away all signs and signals and let people figure out navigation for themselves. Sounds like survival of the least idiotic, to me.

New word heard in a meeting: correlationship

e.g. "As you can see, there is a direct correlationship between these two data points..."

Here is a picture of my new weiner dog Franklin. He's probably the best dog ever.

Vivent les Francais..."planting explosives in the suitcases of unsuspecting passengers - all in the name of safety."

Cool! Watch out ,though. Grey goo may be nigh upon us. (via geekpress)

*sniffle*

I know that sentimentality is considered cheap, but this octopus really tugs at the heartstrings.

Maybe it's because octopuses are so smart that the story got to me.

Yet another reason why I should endeavor to get more sleep at night.

Here is a funny thing that happened the other day. I was in Fred Meyer and there was an announcement for John to meet his wife in the home department. About five minutes later, the announcer said, "John, please meet your ho-I mean wife-in the home department."

Test post for Megan.

Yeah, FDA, stick it to the women! They don't need- much less deserve- the levels of sexual satisfaction that men do.

Next On Fox:When Blogs Go Quiet!

It's been a busy week: the lab has been productive, we have some understanding of what's going on, and now I need to go back into sample production mode. Turns out that the project we're working on has a program kickoff in the middle of this month in D.C., and we're trying to send some samples out to get Erbium Oxide deposited on them. This would count as significant progress to report at the kickoff meeting.

Home's good, but I need another, more hefty, break. Honestly, I'm dyin', here!

Thanks to all those who wished me a happy birthday- I had a pretty good one!

We got some neat results at work, I had my girl with me :), and I got the first 3 seasons of The West Wing on DVD! Whoo-hoo!

We watched the pilot episode last night- it's the only episode that I've seen where the theme music matched well with the action. Next up: Post Hoc, Ergo Propter Hoc. (wherein Josh, a lawyer, doesn't know the name of a logical fallacy)